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The Black Plague Batted .500 Its Rookie Year
ElDuderino44137 writes "Hey, kids, got the summer blues? The CIA isn't the only one with a kids' page to keep you busy. The Centers for Disease Control have the full set of collectible infectious disease trading cards. Mix 'em, match 'em, trade 'em, recoil in abject horror from 'em."
Something to go with my stuffed microbes!
MOM! Tommy got Ebola again! Tell him to share!
... gotta catch 'em all ;)
I don't know about you, but I am *so* not eating the bubblegum that comes with these!
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
Here I thought that those "Most Awful Criminals" cards were in bad taste.
Reading the back of the Anthrax card, it's just propaganda for kids to show mommy and daddy so they won't defund the CDC.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
except it's with STDs.
girl, you WISH i'd trade The Ninja for your Warts, get that thing away from me!!
we could even incorporate it into a card game.
I'll trade my level 34 Master Ninja for your 55 +strength Herpulox.
get me some buttah baby i'm onna ROLL!!!
"It'll destroy you if you try to make it mean anything to anyone but yourself." - Henry Rollins
Get all of the cool toys. Why didn't they have this when I was growing up?
Perhaps off topic, but does anyone else remember going to the bookstore during the Camus section of senior-year english class and asking for The Plague?
No such thing as the "black plague" --
There is the Black Death, referring to a specific pandemic of Bubonic Plague in Europe in 1347-1350.
Moo.
And did you know that it is not know for certain that "The Black Death" even was bubonic plague? Scientisits and historians now assume that the epidemic that swept through Europe was that disease, but since European medicine at the time was, shall we say, non-scientific, it is impossible to know with certainty what the diease really was. I believe (no, I can't cite any sources) that there are problems in the hisotical record with the bubonic plague theory, and even some other contenders for the actual cause of the epidemic.
-------------------------
A person of moderate zeal
It's not at all certain that the black death was caused by the bubonic plague.
There you go again, debasing our heros. Our children need diseases to aspire to.
More or less. The Black Death wiped out one-third to one-half of [any given European / West Asian / Middle Eastern geographical area], with the exceptions of Poland and Scotland, which didn't get touched.
Something to tell the next kid you find singing "ring around the rosey," a nursery rhyme about the Plague. :-)
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Oh, the things that are not known for certain... :)
While there is some new-ish research that might indicate otherwise, my understanding is that the research and its findings are not being very well received.
Still very interesting.
-John
I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it. jya.com/ap.htm
I don't get their criteria for giving out the cards. Some major-league diseases are missing like tuberculosis and cholera, but they give some small-time (yeah yeah it's not small if you've got it) diseases their own card. Damnit, I want a 1918 influenza card! It killed millions worldwide--a very pricey card I'm sure.
I think this would have given me nightmares when I was a kid (check out page 2, with the thick white membrane in the throat of the Diptheria sufferer, or the backwards-bent leg of the Polio girl)... but I think the helpful translations of scientific words would have made up for it. This snippet (from the Cyclosporiasis blurb) is a fine example:
Yeah, I'm sure the kid knows what "contaminated" means... come on, guys. Though I will forgive them not trying to explain "diarrhea" using small words.
There are only 10 types of people: those who understand decimal, those who don't, and, uh, 8 other types I forget.
this, and this
I'm trying to get modded "Interesting Flamebait Informative and Insightful Redundant Troll" *-* Please Help *-*
Logic, macros, and more
Children quickly become fascinated with things that are a part (and sometimes a horrible part) of their lives. One could say that the purpose for children is to go forth and gather diseases from schools so that they might infect their parents. And so do adults, as in the case of the Black Death and the pandemics of bubonic plague that swept Europe.
A prime case of this type of fascination is in the art of the time, such as that of Hieronymus Bosch and others who began drawing images of intense suffering and disease.
The death caused by these pandemics may also be seen as beneficent, as it gave rise to increased rights for the peasantry, the creation of a "middle class" and the concept of general human rights, which lead to the end of the feudal system of governments. The nobility could no longer compel peasants to work their land just for their protection and the peasantry demanded actual pay for work.
This also gave rise to the general usage of sirnames that stuck throughout generations, as the kings would tax their noblemen on the basis of the potential in numbers of persons on their lands, instead of only on the size of their holdings. When the kings revenue collectors were faced with seventeen "Johns" they would assign names to them on basis of their employment, where they lived, or how they looked instead of who their father or master was.
One can usually find the etymology of one's sirname in the common tongue of this period.
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
I found this game (Black Death) some years ago. If I recall correctly it started out as a simulation of how disease spreads. It was turned into a game and every once in a while I whip it out to horrify my more 'sensible' friends. Great fun, well worth the $10 I spent a decade ago.
...and that's the end of our show. Donk!
Since the discovery of Helicobacter pylori, which indeed causes ulcers.
The link I gave doesn't say so, but as far as I know it is strongly suspected that it is indeed contagiuous.
Up until the end where a folklorist is quoted, it's extremely speculative, basing almost all its evidence on the fact that the rhyme didn't appear in print until the 1880s. Arguing over the year claimed by an urban legend (or at least the version that they chose to knock down) is pretty pedantic and poorly thought out in this case.
For example, it's much easier to make light of a plague that happened 2 centuries earlier, just as many of the posters here have done. It's also quite possible that nobody had written the rhyme down before 1881 despite its existance, contrary to snopes' arbitrary claims.
The Grimm brothers didn't publish their collection until the early 1800s even though many of the tales had existed long before that. The Hunt translation (the most popular english translation around that era) didn't come until the mid to late 19th century. It seems folk tales and nursery rhymes were in vogue at the time.
The red herring is that snopes exagerates the time span by referring to the 14th century plague rather than the more recent 17th century one. It would take a lot of drama out of their argument if they couldn't write about "five centuries" and "six centuries".
They also dismiss the issue based on a lot of superficial differences. For example:
Fuck off. Why not? The verse "Catch a tiger by the toe" has a disturbingly more racist variation. The use of the word "tiger" is both a linguistic corruption of an earlier form and a deliberate use.
Wow, a few of those sound a lot like sneezing to me. Snopes is also ignoring the regional differences that this probably comes from. I drink pop and use kleenex while others drink soda and use tissues. Before TV and radio, these differences were more prevalent and evolved over time. And for the love of Pete, it's not like we ever obscure morbid concepts in language. That practice passed away a while back.
As for the folklorist, he explains the ring game and how the rhyme fits. That's not enough to claim the rhyme has no other meaning, he just describes its purpose.
The article doesn't present any concrete evidence to show why the plague interpretation is not a valid one, just that the verses are more recent than the 1300s. Considering the line "The nursery rhyme 'Ring Around the Rosie' is a coded reference to the Black Plague." is marked with a big red "False", they sure do a shitty job of addressing the issue.
IMO, treating this snopes article as a solid fact is worse than doing so with the original presumption. It's annoying that they can get away with making such loose arguments just because they wear the magic skeptic hat.